Scream (2022), the fifth installment of the franchise, was released January 15, 2022.

There are many issues with this film. The first issue of the film is the fact that every film before had an expositional scene with a person who gets a phone call and afterward gets murdered by Ghostface, the killer of these movies. The girl in this movie does not get murdered, just attacked, making her the first person to survive the opening attack in any of the five films.

Additionally, every single character in this movie is either terrible, or it is impossible to remember they exist until they die. The main character of this film is the daughter of one of the killers from the first film, Billy Loomis. She sees visions of her dead father, which is extremely strange as the only visions we’ve seen in this series before are during dreams. Not only that, it makes no sense for her to even know how her father acted or what he even sounded like as she has never even met the man. 

Even by the end of the film, the main character embraces her killer father and murders the murderer, but her visions of her father seem proud of her. This gives off the vibe she now idolizes the man who killed all of his friends. Yet the only memorable parts of the entire film are the three returning characters; Sidney Prescott, Gale Weathers, and Dewey Riley. And, spoiler alert, Dewey is one of the victims of this film. According to Grant Bebow, “They shouldn’t have killed any classic characters because they have been in every installment, so I hope this is the last film.”

The killers of this film are the main character’s boyfriend and one of her sister’s forgettable friends, one is completely obvious and the other would maybe be surprising if that character had at least 10 minutes of screen time before being revealed as the killer. Additionally, the forgettable friend is almost exclusively who acts as Ghostface as the boyfriend is literally always around, like in every scene with Ghostface.

All in all, this film is okay, the kills are good but the classic plot of Scream seems to have worn out, or at least the writers don’t have the same flair since the series’ creator, Wes Craven has passed.